


Counting Smiles

by SixtySevenChevy



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Depression, Gen, POV Second Person, TW: suicidal thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-21
Updated: 2013-04-21
Packaged: 2017-12-09 03:49:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 933
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/769624
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SixtySevenChevy/pseuds/SixtySevenChevy
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For every smile, you put it off a day.</p><p>For every laugh, you get a week.</p><p>Every "I Love You" is a month.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Counting Smiles

**Author's Note:**

> Trigger Warning for suicidal thoughts. You have been warned.

He’s all you’ve got. Without him you wouldn’t be here still. He’s the only reason you’re still living, instead of having been lit on fire to burn years ago. Sammy is the only thing keeping you here.

You get into a bad place, mentally, sometimes. When you’re there, wandering through the dark, searching for a way out, he calls you home. He grabs you, wraps you into a hug, and though you protest you let it happen. His gentle hand on your shoulder calms you down, keeps your breathing at the proper rate, sends the impending panic attack away.

Of course, he doesn’t fix everything, and you know that the day will come when you do it. You can’t bring yourself to think the word, but you know exactly what you mean. 

You tell yourself that for every smile he gives you, you’ll put it off a day. For every laugh, you get a week. Every _I Love You, Dean_ is a month. You do your best to make him happy, though usually you don’t see the point of trying. You’re only prolonging the inevitable, after all. 

Once, he hands you a bottle of little white pills. Tells you to take them, one every morning, one every night, and you’ll feel better. You try it, and it works. For the first time, you’re happy, you’re feeling, you’re laughing along with him. You feel like you’re flying, and it doesn’t even scare you. He tells you that this is what normal people feel like all the time, and that if you run out of the pills you should tell him, because he’s got a friend at your new school who has the same problem that you do, and he can get more. 

You’re on your second bottle, happy as you’ve never been before, when Dad finds them. He throws them out, ignores your protests that they help, tells you that depression is just a pussy’s way of saying he’s a weakling. You haven’t taken your pills that morning. You agree wholeheartedly.

Sammy asks why you’re so upset, if you’ve been taking your medication, and you tell him that you ran out. He offers to get more, and you tell him to, but Dad moves you the next day. You’re in Kentucky now, and Sammy is livid that he didn’t even get to finish the seventh grade. You calm him down by telling him a story about angels. He always did seem to like angels. You, on the other hand, don’t believe. Oh well, it makes him smile anyway. That brings you up to three years of time to use.

You go through a few years, counting smiles and laughs, recording them in a leather-bound journal, just like Dad’s, only with numbers instead of instructions on murder. At the rate you’re going, you’ll be alive until you’re twenty-five. You’ve got six years to live in. Somehow, it seems like too much.

Dad drags you out on a hunt, vampires in Minnesota, just a routine wipe-out. Sam comes too, bouncing in the backseat, excited that you’re finally letting him come on a vampire hunt. (You’ve always made him stay home for those. Vamps are too dangerous to allow anywhere near your life support.)

You’re in the heat of things, fending off a small horde, back to back with your little brother, when it happens. You hear him scream, feel him fall, and your vision goes black for a minute. Dad is nowhere to be seen. He left a few minutes before the vampires attacked, going to look for their leader. You’re alone, and Sam is… Sam needs help.

Somehow you manage to get rid of the vampires, and then you’re on your knees, clutching at his jacket, shouting his name over and over, but he’s not responding. Brown eyes are open, staring blankly at the dingy grey ceiling, and you don’t think he’s breathing. Neither are you.

Just when you give up, he rattles in a shallow breath. You lock eyes for a split second, and watch as the life bleeds out of his. You’re completely numb, hands covered in the blood of a teenager, a little boy who had years ahead of him, who just hours before was complaining about your off-key singing and smacking you on the back of the head from the backseat. 

“Don’t leave me. I’ll die,” you sob.

He tries to smile at you. “I love you, Dean.”

You don’t write it down. It doesn’t count.

XXXXX

You keep to your numbers, but nothing new gets written down. You can’t feel anything anymore. You blindly follow Dad’s orders, listen when he tells you to do something, drop out of high school. How can you go on, after all, without your heart?

You have six years. It’s too long. You can’t stop now, though. All the time he’s given you can’t be wasted. It’s the last thing he ever did for you, and the wishes of a dying man are always to be honored, even if he doesn’t know about them until the instant his heart stops beating. 

Dad gives you the car and leaves you on your own when you turn twenty-one. You have four years.

You get a call from Bobby that Dad’s gone when you’re twenty-two. You have three years.

You get a call from a woman named Jody that Bobby’s gone when you’re twenty-three. You have two years.

You meet a stranger named Crowley in a bar when you’re twenty-four. You have one year.

XXXXX

Sam smiles at you from the passenger seat, not knowing what you’ve done.


End file.
